Stupid White Men-- and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! - Michael Moore [30]
How does the brain process a fear like this, when everything it sees says the opposite? Are white people’s brains hardwired to see one thing but believe the opposite because of race? If that’s the case, then do all white people suffer from some shared low-grade mental illness? If every time the sun was out it was nice and bright and clear, but your brain told you to stay inside because it definitely looked like a storm was brewing, well, we might encourage you to seek some professional help. Are white people who see black boogeymen around every corner any different?
Obviously, no matter how many times their fellow whites make it clear that the white man is the one to fear, it simply fails to register. Every time you turn on the TV to news of another school shooting, it’s always a white kid who’s conducting the massacre. Every time they catch a serial killer, it’s a crazy white guy. Every time a terrorist blows up a federal building, or a madman gets four hundred people to drink Kool-Aid, or a Beach Boys songwriter casts a spell causing half a dozen nymphets to murder “all the piggies” in the Hollywood Hills, you know it’s a member of the white race up to his old tricks.
So why don’t we run like hell when we see whitey coming toward us? Why don’t we ever greet the Caucasian job applicant with, “Gee, uh, I’m sorry, there aren’t any positions available right now”? Why aren’t we worried sick about our daughters marrying white guys?
And why isn’t Congress *trying to ban the scary and offensive lyrics of Johnny Cash (“I shot a man in Reno / just to watch him die”), the Dixie Chicks (“Earl had to die”), or Bruce Springsteen (“...I killed everything in my path / I can’t say that I’m sorry for the things that we done”). Why all the focus on rap lyrics? Why doesn’t the media print rap lyrics like these and tell the truth?
I sold bottles of sorrow, then chose poems and novels.
—Wu-TANG CLAN
People use yo’ brain to gain. —ICE CUBE
A poor single mother on welfare ... tell me how ya did it.
—TuPAC SHAKUR
I’m trying to change my life, see I don’t wanna die a sinner
—MASTER P
African-Americans have been on the lowest rung of the economic ladder since the day they were beaten and dragged here in chains—and they have never made it off that rung, not for a single damn day. Every other immigrant group who has landed here has been able to advance from the bottom to the middle and upper levels of our society. Even Native Americans, who are among the poorest of the poor, have fewer children living in poverty than African-Americans.
You probably thought things had gotten better for blacks in this country. I mean, after all, considering all the advances we’ve made eliminating racism in our society, one would think our black citizens might have seen their standard of living rise. A survey published in the Washington Post in July 2001 showed that 40 to 60 percent of white people thought the average black person had it as good or better than the average white person.
Think again. According to a study conducted by the economists Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and David C. Clingaman, the average income for a black American is 61 percent less per year than the average white income. That is the same percentage difference as it was in 1880! Not a damn thing has changed in more than 120 years.
Want more proof? Consider the following:
• About 20 percent of young black men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four are neither in school nor working—compared with only 9 percent of young white men. Despite the “economic boom” of the nineties, this percentage has not fallen substantially over the last ten years.
• In 1993, white households had invested nearly three times as much in stocks and mutual funds and/or IRA and Keogh accounts as black households. Since then, the stock market has more than doubled its value.
• Black heart attack patients are far